This story has been rejected 15 times. I wrote the first draft in 2021 and decided to share this with the world. My stories often get negative feedback from editors stating that they dislike the mother characters I create and the husband/male point-of-view is not shown enough. But that does a disservice to this story. It is completely made up, not based on any real incident. The only things that were ‘realistic’ were some of the grad school details I added. However, the story speaks a larger truths about caregiving, power dynamics, and feminism in STEM & educational spaces.
Read more about my writing journey.
Ceiling
Lydia wasn’t eating again.
She would stir the spoon in her oatmeal or her soup or her pudding, but she wouldn’t lift it to her mouth. After half an hour, Lydia would leave the table, and the food would remain uneaten in the bowl, congealing for hours.
Lydia was thin, too thin, and Mary, her mother, worried about her. She begged Lydia to eat and made as many concessions as she could afford—a little sugar in her oatmeal, a few raisins in the soup, some vanilla in the pudding—all in the hopes of tempting her appetite. But nothing worked.
Desperate, Mary even bought her some cheap fast food, though she was loath to feed her daughter such meals. But it didn’t matter since Lydia hardly touched them.
The lunch monitor at school complained to Mary that Lydia would throw away uneaten sandwiches and apples. It was such a waste, she reported, her voice crackling over the phone, when there were so many hungry people out there. She would insist that Lydia finish her meal, it was her duty to do so, but somehow, when her back was turned, Lydia would manage to discard the food.
Lydia hardly had any friends either. During recess, she wandered away from the playground and into the grassy field surrounding the school. In Gym class, she was never chosen for a team and would sometimes sit in the corner.
At home, she would often make fanciful, detailed drawings that were remarkable for someone her age, or spend hours reading or daydreaming. She seemed to have little need for others.
So, Mary signed her up for the after-school Youth Club, but nothing changed. Lydia just sat and read while everyone else played basketball. Mary considered sending Lydia to counseling, she even called a few therapists, but the fees were so high that she couldn’t afford them.
Mary thought of so many things that she could do for Lydia, that she pushed away the reason that plagued her the most, and what deep down, she suspected was the root cause of Lydia’s behavior: moving from bright, vibrant California to flat, windy Indiana.
But Indiana was offering her a Ph.D. in Environmental Science, which California couldn’t offer. And she needed a Ph.D. She needed it for a chance at a better job, for a chance to use her mind which had atrophied in the years of tedious office work and parenting. Of fighting with her ex and then his departure with no word left. And she had been too happy to be accepted in the program, which had required essays and standardized exams and reference letters which she had had to beg for. She had always loved school; she had loved tests and homework and being around others her own age.
And Lydia was so young, only six, how could she know the difference? How would she know that she would (probably) never see her best friend again, wouldn’t go to the ocean for a while? Would probably not see her father for a while? Would, in a few years, forget about that life and would have a new life?
They lived in the top half of a ramshackle house, a mile from campus, and a mile from Lydia’s elementary school. She had had to sell her car, so they walked everywhere or took the bus. But Mary felt oddly liberated. Navigating the wind, the snow, and the rain made her feel strong, alive.
And the exercise gave her much needed energy. Mary was enrolled in three classes in addition to doing lab rotations to develop an idea for her dissertation. She expected that her program would take four to six years to complete, and then, after that, she would move back to California, degree in hand, ready to accept a lucrative job offer.
But now, she was poor and overworked, but happy. And Lydia would make friends and memories. She would be happy too.
#
“Oh, my darling Lydia, oh my Lydia,” Mary murmured as she brushed her daughter’s hair. Lydia’s hair was so fine that there were never any snarls. It was a pleasure to brush it, and then to braid it carefully. During this, Lydia was silent, acquiescent. “There you go, dear,” Mary said, setting the brush on her daughter’s dresser as Lydia laid down in her bed. Mary crawled next to her, holding a book from which she began to read aloud. Lydia hardly made any comment. Her body was stiff and curled, and her eyes were closed. Mary stopped reading, kissed her daughter’s forehead, and then left the room.
Lydia opened her eyes. The room was covered in shadows, so she shut them again. She dreamed that monsters were chasing her, she dreamed that trees were falling on her, she dreamed that she would be buried in sand. She dreamed that voices were calling her. She dreamed that food turned into marbles in her throat and choked her. She woke up. Everything was tall and scary. She laid in bed and traced the patterns of the water stains on her ceiling.
She missed the apartment that she had lived in before they moved. She had liked seeing the other people in the hallway—the grandmothers, the young married couples—and knowing they were just beyond the wall. She liked hearing the distant drift of their voices, the tones that she could associate with others.
Here, there was nothing outside the wall, and she was scared. Everyone was so busy here. There were no kids around. And she missed Collin. She had loved Collin. They were married, they had exchanged rings of braided flowers. She had talked to Collin once on her mother’s cell phone, but his voice had sounded so different that she wasn’t sure that it was him. And school was boring, and everyone made fun of everyone else’s clothes and arm hair and leg hair and barrettes and folders. She shrank away from such criticism.
Soon, she heard a few bird calls and saw hints of sunlight. Mary came in and opened her curtains. Another night was over.
#
After she had tucked in Lydia, she pulled tomorrow’s clothes from the dryer and slung them over the kitchen chairs. When she was sure that Lydia was asleep, she texted Bryan, who was in her stats class, so he could come over. They were going to review their notes for the midterm, but she knew what it meant. He came over and they did study for half-an-hour and then they had their tongues in each other’s throats and became a jumble of arms and legs on the sofa. And it was illicit and exciting, more so that it was a school night and they had an exam the next day and her daughter was sleeping in the next room. After, they straightened themselves and he left and she went to sleep, exhausted and sated.
#
The next evening, it was raining, and water was seeping through the cracks in the ceiling. Mary set up bowls of water to collect the rain. She called the landlord, but he was busy. “Toad,” she murmured under her breath.
The constant drip-drip set Mary’s teeth on edge, but Lydia found the sound comforting. For the first time since she had moved there, Mary felt depressed, as if there was a long journey ahead of her, and she had been mistaken to start that journey in the first place. “Well, our lease is up in July, so if this isn’t fixed, we’re moving. I know someone nearby who’s graduating and may want to sublet,” she told her daughter.
But the contours of the house had already begun to wrap themselves around Lydia. She was beginning to get used to the shadows.
#
In December, Lydia was evaluated by the school psychologist. The psychologist, a frowning red-haired woman counting down the days to retirement, pronounced that she was “withdrawn” but didn’t have any apparent learning disabilities. Mary could barely make the meeting. She had had to leave mid-pipetting and would have to go back to the lab later that evening.
Mrs. Grundle said that Lydia was doing well in school but that she was “antisocial.” They ruled out hearing and vision problems, but, as Mrs. Grundle stated, they were so limited in their facilities that Lydia might benefit from an “outside opinion.” She handed Mary a list of names that she stashed in her bag, without looking at them. She had no money for additional psychotherapy; her insurance would hardly cover it.
Mary went back to campus and had Lydia sit in the conference room doing homework while she went back to the lab and finished pipetting her samples.
#
At dinner that evening, Mary ate heartily while Lydia picked at her food. “If you don’t eat, then you’re going to the doctor,” Mary said.
“I don’t care,” Lydia replied.
“You’re going to eat, because they think that I’m a bad mother.”
“You are!” Lydia shouted.
Mary felt as if she had been slapped. “Go to your room,” she whispered and Lydia went.
Mary felt awful and pulled out the list of psychologists from her bag. She researched some of the names on her laptop and tried to find an inexpensive one. But it was exhausting scrolling and searching and hunting, and she finally gave up in frustration.
Stress-eating handfuls of dry cereal, she opened up a spreadsheet containing some data she had collected. She became absorbed in arranging the numbers and making graphs. When she went up to check on Lydia, she found her already asleep in her clothes.
#
In the Spring, Mary’s research project was going well. She had chosen a lab and had begun doing preliminary work for her dissertation.
And Lydia was doing better. Lydia was eating vegan soy milkshakes, which Mary found disgusting, but Lydia would consent to actually sip. Mary had done well in her classes during the Fall and was going to finish her course requirements this semester so she could focus on her dissertation research. She wanted to characterize microbial properties in rivers and hoped to make substantial progress over the summer.
That Spring, the weather was awful, bitter and biting, and the cold snaked its way into their house during the evenings. The walls radiated cold, and the windows, despite the drawn curtains, were iceboxes. Lydia, who was ever sensitive to cold, huddled beneath her blankets, wondering if she would ever be warm again. But she grudgingly ate, if only to stave off the meetings with the counselor at school and her mother’s nagging.
She tried to talk to Collin again on her mother’s cell phone. She had memorized the number and called him sometimes, but it was hard to talk, hard to think of things to say.
Lydia was bored in school, but she tried hard, because she wanted to get 100s on her papers. She didn’t want to be called out in class and not know the answer.
“I can’t, I’m sorry,” Mary had said when she had been nominated for the student government. But it gave her an unexpected pleasure to be popular. She had never been popular in high school but in grad school, where the jocks and the mean girls had already been filtered out, people seemed to like her. They wanted to go out and get drinks, or bitch about the bursar’s office, or trade favors. Mary found herself talkative, optimistic, and even outgoing. Her new friends urged her again, and she was nominated and won.
So, she spent her evenings on campus. Lydia walked home from school and watched TV or did homework while her mother went to events on campus or finished research. Lydia was glad that her mother was gone. It gave her space to breathe.
Her heart thudded faintly when Mary would waltz in, give her a distracted kiss and then open her laptop, to study.
#
Lydia had turned seven and hadn’t eaten any cake, but she had gotten a present from Collin whose mom had sent it across the country. It was a dinosaur set which she spent hours arranging and rearranging in her bedroom.
One evening, it was raining hard, and she was happy being inside. Her room actually felt warm for once, though raindrops were easing their way through the rattling window and pooling on the sill.
And then she heard the front door creak open, someone jiggling the lock, and then the slam of the door closing.
The man came to her room and said “Lydia” and she looked at him and he was shadowy and thin, but familiar. His face and jaw were set in a hard line. “Dad?” she asked tentatively, and he replied, “Yes.”
She hadn’t hugged him and didn’t want to, so she sat on her bed as the rain poured. “Lydia, I came to see you,” he said, expectantly.
“I remember you.”
“I brought you a present.” He pulled a hastily wrapped box from his pocket.
“Okay.” She replied, unmoving.
“Here, open it.” He handed it to her, and she slowly peeled back the paper. She opened the box and pulled out a pink barrette.
“Thank you.”
He stepped back and looked at her desk, glancing at a few of her school papers. “I wanted to ask, are you happy here?”
“I don’t know.” She fiddled with the barrette, not looking at her father.
“Maybe you could live with me?”
She looked up at him skeptically, tentatively. He seemed like a stranger to her. She said nothing, did nothing.
“Honey, are you happy here?” he asked again, cautiously.
“Mom’s away a lot.” Why did she feel a stab of disloyalty, a tingle coursing through her, rushing to her head?
“Is she?” he replied, and she didn’t respond.
A door slammed. Her turned and left, before she could tell him to stay.
The sounds are familiar. She had almost forgotten them. The swells of their voices. The sharp staccato noise that her father makes when he’s mad. The low, wailing quality in her mother’s voice. The clash when they speak over each other at the same time.
But beneath this is the sound of splintering, of splitting, of the weight of years cracking in plaster.
When the ceiling caves in, it looks like it has snowed.
I very much enjoyed your writing.